UK Impact VC Eka Ventures Closes Second Fund at $107M
April 13, 2026 – 7:38 am
When Eka Ventures held the final close of its first fund at £68 million in 2021, the London-based firm made a bold claim: that impact investing and venture-scale returns were not mutually exclusive but a shared thesis. Five years later, they are doubling down. Eka has closed its second fund at $107 million (£80 million), bringing its total assets under management to $200 million and solidifying its position as the UK’s largest early-stage impact VC focusing on health, well-being, and sustainability.
Fund II will back up to 30 pre-seed and seed-stage companies in the UK, with an average first check of roughly $2 million. The firm sets aside reserves for follow-on investments, maintaining its discipline of leading or co-leading 90% of its deals.
The investment thesis remains centered on consumer technology companies operating at the intersection of:
- Preventative healthcare
- Sustainable consumption
- Widening access to essential services like housing, insurance, and education.
Backers of this thesis include a diverse mix of public-interest capital and philanthropic foundations. Eka’s LP base for Fund II includes:
- British Business Bank (committed £36 million to Fund I)
- Better Society Capital
- Guy’s & St Thomas’ Foundation
- The Health Foundation
- WRAP
- Esmée Fairbairn Foundation
- John Ellerman Foundation
- Vivensa Foundation
and others.
Eka argues that its debut fund’s performance supports the thesis. While DPI (distributions to paid-in capital) and TVPI (total value to paid-in capital) figures for Fund I are in the top 5% for its 2021 vintage, these figures have not been independently verified.
The portfolio boasts successes like:
- Runna, the running training app acquired by Strava in April 2025
- Urban Jungle
- Axle
- Hived
- Foresight Data Machines
- Jude
- Flok Health
Several portfolio companies have since raised from prominent VCs like Index Ventures, Accel, and Balderton.
The market Eka targets is immense, even if it doesn’t always fit the traditional VC mold. The UK spent 10.9% of GDP on health in 2023, totaling roughly £317 billion in 2024, according to the King’s Fund. Yet, preventive care accounted for just 5.2% of government healthcare spending, per ONS data. Eka identifies this gap between treatment and prevention spending as a high-leverage opportunity: companies addressing structural inefficiencies in health through earlier detection, behavior change, and digitally delivered care could save the NHS billions annually.
Similarly, on the sustainability front, ONS data shows consumer expenditure is now the single largest contributor to UK greenhouse gas emissions at 26% of the 2024 total, with transport close behind at 16.1%. This implies that decarbonization increasingly hinges on consumer behavior changes, an area where Eka’s portfolio companies aim to make a difference.